Little two-year-old Kate, Charlecombe’s own child, was fortunately quite unlike her half-sister.
She was a gay, enterprising baby, with bobbing brown curls, the brilliant hazel eyes of Cecilia and Lucy, her features as yet indeterminate but her complexion so clear and roseate as to present a startling contrast with her mother’s three elder children.
Charlecombe was a little shy of her, as he was of all primitive things or emotions, but he was very proud of her and secretly looked forward to the day when Kate would be a companion to him. He never admitted to himself that his marriage disappointed him in any way, and indeed the romantic hope that had gilded, for one moment, his imagination had died so quickly as to be almost at once forgotten.
Cecilia had been only four years married to him when Lorimer Charlecombe was fatally injured in a riding accident.
He was carried back to The Grove and lay in his own bed, dying, for three days and nights.
After the specialist—sent for from London by Cecilia, who distrusted, with ample reason, the local Dr. Williams—had gone away again, Charlecombe told his wife that he knew he was going to die.
“While there’s life there’s hope,” said Cecilia automatically.
He smiled feebly and moved his head.
“Everything is in order. My will is at the Bank, and everything is left to you. Do what you like, my dear, but I should like little Kate to have this place one day.”
Cecilia wept, decorously and without passion.
Charlecombe asked to see a clergyman, and listened with gradually enfeebled attention to his reading of the Commendatory Prayers.
A naturally devout man, his last distinct utterance was a murmured response before he passed into unconsciousness.
Cecilia, now close on fifty years of age, had lived two lives after the colourless years of girlhood; one with Frederic Lemprière in Barbados, and the other in the green quietudes of South Wales, first as a widow arid then as Lorimer Charlecombe’s wife.
Through both had run one single strand of reality, and one only: her love for her sons, of which Fred had incomparably the greater share.
Part I
Nice Maritime
(August 1939)
“Nice,” announced one of them, reading out the name of the station as the train drew up, affording a view of stout men in black bérets and black alpaca coats, palm-trees that seemed to grow at odd angles, red rocks and red dust and, in distant flashes, a shimmering, sapphire-coloured sea.
No one made any comment.
The other members of the party were engaged in earnest discussion. The words “Stalin,” “Third International” “Capitalist system” and “Spanish War” emerged again and again, and the girl who had said “Nice” wished that she was politically-minded, like the others.
But then three of them had been to the South of France before, and to her it was new and she was excited about her holiday and hoped they wouldn’t all have to come dashing home again because war had broken out, although that would be exciting too, and seemed extremely probable.
Sue looked round the carriage —they filled a whole carriage—and hoped to goodness that the others would all relax a little when they reached Mentone. It wouldn’t be much fun if they sat in the lovely burning sunshine on the crimson rocks and just talked about Hitler and Mr. Chamberlain and the starving refugees from Spain.
Obviously Rosemary Dallas, Sue Ballantyne’s first cousin, wasn’t really any more interested in the international situation than was Sue herself. She was pretending to be, so as to impress Sue’s brother Carol—who was only too ready to be impressed—and the two other boys who were not relations, Nick and Laurence—Sue had no idea what the surname of either was. They had just appeared, in Aunt Mona’s magnificent drawing-room in Grosvenor Square, and had become “two of Rosemary’s young men.” Sue sighed with envy.
Rosemary was, and had, ‘everything that was enviable. She was the only child of Aunt Mona and Uncle Archie, who were as rich as rich could be, and they let her do everything she liked and have everything she wanted. This was not because they adored her, as the parents of an only child always did in books, but because Uncle Archie never seemed aware of anything except his business in the City, his meals and his collection of Chinese jade, and Aunt Mona, who looked scarcely older than Rosemary, had her own affairs to keep her occupied.
Sue glanced for a moment at Lady Dallas, leaning back in her corner seat, asleep. She wasn’t what Sue called good-looking, but fearfully smart and attractive, and her red hair, in beautiful natural waves, was either not touched-up at all, or else so skilfully done that it didn’t look touched-up. Sue didn’t care for her Aunt Mona—she much preferred the two humble unmarried elder aunts, who were poor and dowdy and lived in their Devonshire village all the year round—but for that very reason she would be just, and hand it to Aunt Mona that she had a lovely figure, and marvellous clothes and jewels, and that she knew how to put them on.
Rosemary, now, was pretty. She was tall and slight and somehow fluid, so that every time she moved, one couldn’t help noticing the long streamlined grace of her body.
Her hair wasn’t flame-coloured, as Aunt Mona’s still was and as that of the aunts had evidently once been, though now faded, and unbecomingly streaked with grey—but a lovely light auburn. Her eyes were blue, and her lashes dark. Did anyone ever have such luck? thought Sue for the hundredth time. Also for the hundredth time, she reminded herself with ungenerous satisfaction that Rosemary’s soft curls, brushed back from her beautiful forehead, were not natural but the result of an expensive permanent wave acquired in Paris.
Although only seventeen, two whole years younger than Sue, Rosemary had been allowed to leave school and become grown-up, with a permanent wave, a complete make-up set, and as many clothes as could be made or bought in Paris at the end of July.
And Aunt Mona was not only taking her to the South of France for a month, but had carelessly invited the two young men, Nick and Laurence, “to make it more amusing.” She had also invited her nephew Carol, and when darling Carol had said that he’d love it, but he’d promised to go to Cornwall on a walking-tour with Sue in August, Aunt Mona had simply said, “Well, bring Sue to France instead. We’d love to have her. You’ll both be my guests, of course.”
Sue knew well enough that nobody really felt they’d “love to have her” except Carol himself, but it was terribly generous of Aunt Mona. Carol had always been Aunt Mona’s favourite, because he was the son of her only surviving brother, the other one having been killed in what Sue supposed would soon be called “the last war,” and the only boy in the Ballantyne family. Though why that mattered so much to the older generation, Sue simply couldn’t see. There was nothing whatever for Carol to inherit, except Daddy’s overdraft and poor old Rock Place, with a mortgage on it, where he’d never be able to live even if his job didn’t happen to be in a publisher’s office in London. And Carol wasn’t the sort who’d ever make any money or get on very well. He’s got no self-confidence, sadly thought Sue—who hadn’t got much herself.
Carol and I are effete, she thought. That’s the word. Probably Mummie and Daddy, being first cousins, ought never to have married.
A fleeting question passed through her mind as she recalled her parents—Daddy, ineffectively fanning, always worried by his lame foot, smashed up at some time or other in the 1914 war—Mummie much more vital and courageous, but always bothered about the difficulty of finding maids, and paying bills, and fussing desperately over the health and well-being of Carol and Sue.
Thank goodness I don’t live at home, thought Sue, who had a secretarial job in London.
If she ever had a lover, and they decided to marry, they’d make a better and less prosaic thing of marriage than poor Daddy and Mummie had done, that was absolutely definite.
Quite instinctively, at the thought of a lover, Sue looked at Nick and Laurence. But she didn’t think either of them was her sort at all—too much the wealthy-artistic type—and
anyway, who’d look at her with Rosemary there?
Her brother Carol turned his head and smiled at her—his kind, reassuring, oddly ironic smile.
Sue smiled back, passionately grateful.
She didn’t mind Carol’s having all the looks—black, wavy hair that he strenuously damped down, very light hazel eyes between thick black lashes, and a good three and a half inches over and above his six feet of height.
She adored him.
“Was that Nice we stopped at?” Carol asked.
Sue realized with surprise that the echo of her unanswered announcement had not long died away, and that Carol wanted her not to feel that it had been ignored.
The others stopped talking about world-revolution and Christianity—they would stop for Carol, although not for Sue—and Rosemary, in the drawling tones that were always difficult to follow because she spoke with her lips closed whenever there wasn’t a cigarette between them, suddenly said:
“Nice? I’ve got a great-uncle buried in Nice Maritime.”
They all, except the sleeping Lady Dallas, began to laugh.
“Who but you would have a great-uncle buried in Nice!” said Nick, looking at Rosemary with affection and as much admiration as though she had said something brilliant.
“My dear, she hasn’t. She made it up,” declared the other young man, Laurence, equally affectionate and admiring.
“Honest to God, I have. At least I think I have. Carol, isn’t it true?”
“Not that I know of,” said Carol. “I mean, it’s a frightfully good opening conversationally and all that, but I can’t imagine it’s being true.”
“Ask Mummie. Oh no, she’s wrapped in slumber, poor pet. But you ought to know, Carol. He was your great-uncle too.”
“And mine,” said Sue—and immediately felt that everybody would know she was deliberately butting in, so that they’d have to notice her.
“But, darling,” urged Laurence, “why should he be buried in Nice? Did he stake his last dollar at rouge-et-noir and shoot himself in the grounds at Monte Carlo or something?”
“I haven’t the least idea. I only know that I’m perfectly certain I was once told, I think by Aunt Callie—Carol’s mama—that Great-uncle was buried at Nice Maritime. His name was Lucy.”
This time they screamed with laughter.
“Darling, you’re marvellous! A great-uncle named Lucy, buried at Nice Maritime! It’s too good to be true.”
“It is true,” said Sue abruptly. “But he wasn’t a great-uncle—at least, he may have been Rosemary’s, but he was Carol’s and my grandfather. He died ages before we were born—I don’t think even Mummie remembers much about him.”
“But, my dear, he couldn’t have been called Lucy. Imagine an elderly roué, shooting the moon at Monte Carlo and wearing peg-top trousers and a monocle, as he doubtless did, and answering to the name of Lucy!” said Laurence.
“Perhaps they called him Lulu,” Nick suggested.
“If it was my grandfather,” Carol said, “his name was Lucian, so I suppose the poor devil might have had to answer to the name of Lucy. Lucian Lemprifere. Frightfully alliterative, wasn’t he?”
“I knew I was right,” murmured Rosemary. “Fancy his being your grandfather. I can’t imagine why he should have been buried at Nice Maritime, can you? Too fantastic of him.”
“Perhaps he died there,” Sue said.
She meant to be very satirical, but Rosemary said: “Darling, how too bright of you! You mean, he didn’t just die in London or any other civilized place and leave instructions that he should deliberately be carted out to the South of France and deposited at Nice Maritime?”
They all laughed again—even Sue, although only because she didn’t want to appear disconcerted.
“Perhaps his widow wanted an excuse for seeing the world,” said Laurence.
“I don’t think he had a widow. I mean, she died ages before he did or something, and my mother was brought up by her grandmother.”
“Goodness,” Rosemary said, bored. “It all sounds too involved for words. Anyway, I knew I was right. He was called Lucy, and he was buried at Nice—presumably because he died there. Why, I can’t imagine.”
“It’s the sort of place,” Nick explained, “that people absolutely crawl to, for the express purpose of dying there. The poor old man wanted the sun, I expect, to warm his old bones.”
“Especially as he was a Creole,” said Carol.
“My dear! How thrilling. Do you mean a black?”
“Not any blacker than I am. Lemprière is a West Indian name, and my mother was a Lemprière, and old Lucy—which was his absurd name—had a sugar plantation or something out there. It all went to rack and ruin long ago, I imagine.”
“Darling, what masses you know about your ancestors!” Rosemary said, looking more bored than ever. “I’m so thankful I haven’t any that anyone knows anything about. Daddy, thank God, is utterly self-made and Mummie’s lot were all dull, middle-class yeomen with nothing but red hair to recommend them.”
“Rosemary!” cried Sue. “You’ve forgotten Grannie. She was just as much yours as ours, and she was born Fanny Lemprière. You’ve just as much West Indian blood as Carol and I have.”
“Have I? How ghastly! I suppose I have. I’d completely forgotten poor Grannie. As a matter of fact, I honestly thought she’d simply been born Old Mrs. Ballantyne.”
The speed of the train slackened.
Rosemary and Sue took lipsticks and compacts from their bags and began to make-up.
The young men, Laurence and Nick, drew out pocket-combs and anxiously ran them through their hair.
Carol Ballantyne was still gazing from the window.
“I think this would be rather a good place to be buried in. A lot better than being blown to shreds by a beastly German bomb, which is what will happen to all of us.”
“It’ll save funeral expenses,” retorted Nick. “No marble monuments.”
“What’s the good of a marble monument anyway?” said Rosemary, carefully outlining her beautiful mouth. “I daresay Great-uncle Lucy has one at Nice, but who cares?”
Sue said: “We might go and look at it. But I don’t suppose anyone would even know where it was, now.”
“Or care,” said Rosemary. “I think we ought to wake Mummie, we’re just arriving. Heavens, what a mess I look after all this travelling!”
“Darling, you look marvellous,” said Nick, Laurence and Carol.
Sue grimaced at herself, unseen, in her little pocket-mirror.
Her dark eyes set in the sallow oval of her small face, and her soft, straight brown hair, were not marvellous, she knew, and she felt sure that the others, if they thought of her at all, just thought of her as being uninteresting.
Especially with Rosemary there.
Why, Rosemary could even get away with that perfectly pointless remark about having a great-uncle called Lucy whom nobody had ever heard of, buried at Nice.
Part II
Rock Place
(1910–1914)
Chapter I
(1)
If one stopped to look at all the things that had happened, it seemed as though they must have taken years and years. But if one didn’t think about them except one at a time, they all seemed to have happened almost at the same minute.
Callie made this bewildering discovery when she was eleven, nearly twelve, years old, when first of all Grandmama, who’d always been there, became ill and died, then Uncle Fred made one of his sudden appearances in Bridgetown, and sent her and amah to stay with Lady Ermington and finally arrived there himself and told Callie that she was going to England to live.
“To school?” said Callie.
This had happened sooner or later, and usually sooner, to all the children she knew in Barbados.
No, not to school, said Uncle Fred. To her Aunt Fanny and Uncle Tom and their children, who would be her first cousins and teach her to play cricket.
“Will you be there too?” Callie aske
d, hoping he would say yes.
She liked Uncle Fred who, unlike Grandmama, had never been at all strict, and played the piano a great deal and always brought her a present whenever he came home.
“Later, perhaps,” said Uncle Fred, pulling his enormous black moustache and looking down at her from his great, unusual height.
“When, Uncle Fred ?”
“When the moon turns blue,” said Uncle Fred.
Callie asked Lady Ermington a few questions, but not very many because she didn’t know her at all well and was afraid she might be cross.
Grandmama had almost always been rather cross, if one asked too many questions.
“When am I going to England?”
“Quite soon, dear. In about a fortnight, I expect,” said Lady Ermington.
“Will amah come too?”
“No, she wants to stay in Barbados. But you’ll be travelling with Mrs. Edwards, and her baby’s amah will look after you. And I expect your uncle and aunt will meet you.”
Callie would have liked to ask a great deal more—about her uncle and aunt, and their children, and their house in Devonshire, and whether she was going to live with them for ever and ever—but Lady Ermington probably wouldn’t know, and Grandmama had made Callie understand that children who asked too many questions were a nuisance.
Lady Ermington was kind, but she was terribly busy most of the time, and when Uncle Fred came, she spent her time walking up and down the verandah arm in arm with him, talking.
She told her children, Diane and Geoffrey, to look after Callie, but really, Callie couldn’t help thinking, it was she who looked after them. They were only seven and eight years old.
Just as she was growing used to being with the Ermingtons, and had begun to look forward to the half-hour after tea when Uncle Fred, extended in his long chair, always let her come and play with the dolls beside him, she suddenly found that she was to sail in two days’ time.
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